


Solo

by pickleplum



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 17:03:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickleplum/pseuds/pickleplum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One more reason to be disappointed in Raleigh Becket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solo

“When his brother died, he got the Jaeger back to shore on his own. Only one other pilot’s been able to do that,” Herc barks and Chuck can’t hold his defiant glare for long. Chuck knows.

He knows.

He can’t help but know, damn his old man.

And Chuck knows that he’d never be capable. He couldn’t do it. One more reason to be disappointed in Raleigh Becket. The only guy strong enough to do what he did and enough of a coward to run away afterward.

Chuck’s felt the strain of solo combat. In Busan with _Lucky Seven_ and Scott. His alignment breaks when Scott’s mind wanders and _Lucky_ lurches to a standstill with the kaiju, a nasty Category 3, headed right for them. He fights to stay conscious. He does what he has to, what he’s trained to do, and forces himself to take solo control. 

His limbs feel so heavy. He can barely move. It takes all of his concentration and strength to pull _Lucky_ upright and raise an arm to block. His mind is already fogging from the strain. When the kaiju bites down on _Lucky’s_ forearm, he screams. The world starts to go black. 

It’s too much.

Still, he’s a Ranger, for christ’s sake, so he forces his left arm and hand to grab the horn on the side of the thing’s head and tries to pry its jaws off its other arm, but he doesn’t have the strength. 

The kaiju bites down harder and slams its second set of forelimbs into _Lucky’s_ torso, shredding her armor and puncturing fuel lines. He’s nearly blacking out, but he manages to lower _Lucky_ to her knees rather than letting her fall face-first into the harbor which would definitely kill them. He tries to engage _Lucky’s_ shock knuckles but he’s being thrown around the Conn-pod. There’s blood in his eyes and he can’t feel his right arm and his vision is swimming and he can feel a nosebleed starting.

This is going to end soon, one way or another.

Suddenly, the kaiju is gone. The Conn-pod stable. 

Is he dead? No, not dead. _Nova_ pulled the kaiju away. 

He sags against the harness and _Lucky_ wobbles on her bent knees. He disconnects before the neural load can finish killing him and hopes _Nova_ can keep the kaiju from ending him that way.

When he wakes up, he’s in the hospital at the Sydney Shatterdome, Chuck at his bedside hiding his worry behind snarling lips, having been flown down from Kodiak. Just in case.

Chuck knows what it feels like to try and fail in solo combat. Even though he’s better and stronger than his old man, he knows down to the soles of his boots that he’d fail, too. He’d try and die. So he hates Raleigh Becket for running almost as much as he hates his own weakness.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/2747.html?thread=4741307#t4741307):  
> “It happened in Lucky Seven's final battle, when the Drift between the Hansen brothers collapsed. unable to contimplate sharing brainspace with his brother after whatever he'd just seen, Herc tried to shove Scott out of the picture entirely, and finish the fight on his own. He should have been able to do it. Yeah, he'd heard about Captain Casey, and Lt. D'onofrio, and how they hadn't managed solo. But Herc had been friends with Stacker Pentecost since the program had begun, and had known exactly why his friend and fellow pilot got promoted to a desk job. and assuming Lucky went down after Gipsy did, Herc also knows that the younger Becket kid lasted nearly seven hours solo. so he tries. But the neural load is too much, he can't make Lucky move, much less fight. and Scott, who's still in the Conn-Pod, still hooked into the Drift manages to force their connection open just enough from where Herc slammed it shut so they don't end up dying at the hands of whatever kaiju they're facing, though Lucky still ends up at Oblivion Bay. And that's what's behind his respect for Raleigh at Hong Kong, because Herc knows firsthand just how difficult it is to fight solo, and that Raleigh managed it, that he was still able to fight again, makes him a stronger man than Herc knows he is.”


End file.
